Awatere defends herself against fraud claims

Donna Awatere Huata and her husband Wi Huata outside the Auckland District Court. Herald picture / Kenny Rodger

Former ACT MP Donna Awatere Huata turned down a scholarship at the London School of Opera, her fraud trial in Auckland was told today.

She told the jury of nine women and three men she was auditioned after an event involving her father which caused her family to fall apart and she decided to stay in New Zealand.

Awatere Huata's father, Arapeta Awatere, was jailed for life in 1969 after being convicted of murdering his mistress's lover.

Awatere Huata told the court she then completed two psychology degrees at the University of Auckland after her singing teacher Sister Mary Leo told her she needed to understand the demented women she would portray as an opera singer.

She was giving evidence for the first time since the trial began a fortnight ago of her and her husband Wi Huata in Auckland District Court.

The couple faces seven charges, four joint charges of fraud and one joint charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice. Donna Awatere Huata faces two additional fraud charges.

The Serious Fraud Office alleged the couple used $82,000 of taxpayer money for personal expenses after it had been given to the Pipi Foundation to be used to help under-privileged Maori children.

Some of the money paid for a stomach stapling operation for Awatere Huata to lose weight and some of it paid the school fees for their children, the SFO alleged.

The Pipi Foundation was established by Awatere Huata in 1999 with a four-minute reading programme and over three years had been given more than $800,000 in Government money.

Today she told the court she became a child psychologist with the Department of Education and developed the four-minute reading programme later used by the Pipi Foundation.

She said she could see the reading recovery programme used in schools was allowing Maori and Pacific Island children to fall behind because of language difficulties.

In Otara, south Auckland, she found the four-minute programme taught children to read three times faster than the reading recovery programme. The four-minute programme was dropped by the 1984 Labour government but some schools kept it on, she told the court.

She later gifted the programme to the Pipi Foundation.

The trial continues.

- NZPA